Android 4.3 ROMs for Google Edition Galaxy S4 and HTC One leak

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Some early adopters who rushed out to buy the Galaxy S4 and HTC One are no doubt wishing they’d held off and purchased the Google Edition phones instead. Well, you can kiss your buyer’s remorse goodbye: Google Edition ROMs with vanilla Android 4.3 for both are now available to download.

The ROM kitchen over at TrickDroid has cooked up the Google Edition HTC One firmware. It brings a stock Android experience (so long, Sense!) to HTC’s new flagship smartphone. Feedback so far has been overwhelmingly positive, and there doesn’t appear to be any major bugs to report.

Meanwhile, the team at Sammobile claim to have an early 4.3 build for the Samsung Galaxy S4. They claim that this is from a Google Play Edition variant of the S4, and the build is completely functional when tested on other Galaxy S4’s, but there’s no way to verify the validity of the claim. Since Google has not yet announced Android 4.3, and it doesn’t seem that there are any significant changes to the OS, this could well be a very clever fake with an edited build.prop to say 4.3.

Even if the S4 build is not Android 4.3, it is still a high quality build for those who want the Google Play Experience on their Galaxy S4, though it has not been confirmed to work on ever Galaxy S4 yet. Still, based on initial user feedback the HTC One and Galaxy S4 seem to be just fine running the firmware from their Google Edition counterparts.

Want to flash your own device? Complete instructions for the HTC One have been posted by Team Venom over at the XDA forums. If you’ve got a Galaxy S4 that’s itching to transform itself into a Google Edition Android 4.3 device, just grab the ROM from Sammobile and restart in recovery mode. They’ve got step-by-step instructions if you’re not sure how to do it.

The usual firmware flashing caveats apply, of course: exercise caution, because there’s always the possibility (however remote) that something could go wrong and you could brick your phone.